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Three-Day MotoGP Test Begins at Circuit of the Americas (Updated)

Jorge Lorenzo gets his first laps in Austin, Texas.

The MotoGP circuit will visit Austin, Texas this year for the first time, and five riders are testing at the Circuit of the Americas track beginning today. These include factory Yamaha, factory Honda and Stefan Bradl of LCR Honda.

The first lap times show the Hondas have the upperhand at the moment, but don’t put too much stock in these. This track is extremely tricky with a steep learning curve (Jorge Lorenzo has said as much), and the times will drop significantly over the next couple of days.

In case you are unfamiliar with this new circuit, below is a video showing a hot lap in a race car. We will update you as testing continues.

If the track is as tough as Lorenzo says it is, then I wonder how long it will take the Honda and Yamahas to lap the Ducatis???
How many of the 4 riders are wishing the company had shelled out just a little bit to learn the track?

ONE CRT bike is 10 seconds slower. And it was the only CRT bike there. While I think highly of Attack Performance and Blake Young in the AMA, they are currently not a world level team or world level tallent.

The only people who showed up to the test are the teams in with a realistic shot at winning the race (US-based CRT’s and Bradl Excepted). Given the costs it doesn’t make much sense for Ducati to go to the test, only to finish 7-10th anyway. And the year after, they will have the data from the first race, thereby bridging the gap.

As for the CRT’s, I don’t think Blake Young on the GP-Tech bike is a reasonable barometer of how the CRT’s will fare, and I expect that the gap will likely be similar to other tracks with long straights.

Just a comment on the video of the F1 hot-lap. I thought initially it was a real hot-lap, but it’s actually from a computer game! Way to promote the game – so real it takes you two views to figure out it isn’t real. Whoever is “driving” that car has got serious controller skills.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in the first day’s test results. Things will change as the riders and techs learn.

People making a big deal out of the Hondas being fastest here and elsewhere are need to back up and pay more attention. While Dani and Marc are wasting time trying to set fast lap Lorenzo, like he has all winter, is working on race set ups. Look at Lorenzo’s times on race simulations next to what the Hondas are doing on long runs. Any smart Honda folks are very nervous.

Just because Lorenzo might appear to be the calculating type and it might be an easy call to say the Hondas ran off in wild abandon I wouldn’t presume there’s less going on behind the scenes in any camp. They are all learning their setups.

no it’s even easier than that. honda has a technical advantage in a million dollar gearbox. conversely, yamaha has a technical DIS-advantage because they DON’T have a million dollar gearbox. when burgess said they had, with all due respect to the man, i said they DIDN’T have. only now do we see more clearly.

I think some of you are missing my point. Only the fist line was about Austin. Also, if you think setting up a race bike only has to do with which way the corners go you should log off and start studying racing really, really hard before you post again.

The rest of my post was about the whole off season.

We will not know for sure until qualifying tomorrow but if you are an F1 fan take a look at what has been happening in Melbourne. I don’t recall Red Bull leading a single test day but, when it counts, Vettle is kicking everybody’s diffuser around the track and his teammate is #2. Now change Vettle to Lorenzo and you have what I’m predicting for the start of the MotoGP season.

Hey, I could be wrong, it happens often. I’m just saying a smart, talented rider on a really good bike e.g. Lorenzo (or Rossi or Stoner) will beat a not so smart, talented rider on a really good bike (e.g. Pedrosa) every time. This may explain why the redfooted one has exactly 0 MotoGP championships to Lorenzo’s 2, Rossi’s 7 and Stoner’s 2 even though Dani has had probably the best bike on the track (Honda) since he got to MotoGP. The wildcard is Marquez, he could blow my whole theory by being fast and smart and having a Honda.

Has great promise, for sure.
Nobody can doubt that.
I’m always skeptical, though, until the season starts rolling along, as the real races are always a bit different than testing laps and lap times and simulations.

Right you are, track times will invariably come down as the bikes are dialed in and riders become more familiar. Still, it’s always interesting who’s out in front and to do so means some homework’s been done in the off-season. Do we have some previous reference point of times posted by bikes in the past?